At the moment, the Vatican curie and its CEO pope Ben Dick16, are in the process of rendering another pope, Pius XII, sainted. This pope reigned over the Catholic Church from 1939 until 1958, which puts the Second World War right in the middle of his regime.
One wonders, of course, what he did during the war. It is a question that comes up with me every time I see a geezer who’s older than 80 years, because that age inescapably means some kind of involvement in the war. This involvement can be of any kind of course, be it as a Nazi camp guard, a Partisan or an unfortunate assassin with the assignment to take out the Führer himself. But there is bound to be something.
With this man, Pius XII, there is no exception. He is regarded as highly controversial. On the one side, one finds high ranking Israeli officials who praise Pius for his assistance to the escape of several thousands of Jews from the Nazi occupied territories of Europe. Apparently, and I tend to believe this, many of them managed to get away from this death-trap via the Vatican and with the help of high clerics, possibly under orders of their captain, P. himself.
On the other hand the Vatican, in its highly opportunistic attempt to hang on to its power and influence in Europe, did not do anything that might have attracted too much Nazi curiosity. Like condemning the concentration camps for instance, or calling a criminal head of state like Hitler, Stalin or Churchill, to order. It seems clear that fear of retaliations sat deep with these robe wearing church-managers.
It is also noted by some authors on this subject that the fear of the communists, who are the traditional enemies of the church, seemed stronger than anything else. It should be said that traditionalists (and Fascists) like Franco or Mussolini were not going to jeopardise the position of the church, either. And also Hitler had a convenient “Abkommen” with the German branch of the church.
But it was clear from the first years of the second decade in 1900, which marked the start of the Russian revolution, that the communists were going to make minced meat out of religion. This was foretold by the famous line “religion is opium for the people”, coined by Karl Marx, a German Jew by birth, who was the great beacon in the rise of communism in Russia. Marx unfortunately died long before his silly theories became forced into practice in Russia.
Well, maybe better opium than a religion; depending on one’s taste. But the result was that Stalin was not expected to be lenient with the Catholics, especially not the Italian kind. Commie-fear was thus the prime mover for Pius’ non-action, who carefully dealt himself a safe hand of cards in his precarious and delicate game with Hitler.
The question remaining is: Does this man deserve to be sainted? I’ll stay out of that discussion , but there is one thing very curious about it: In order to be sainted, one has to go through certain preliminary-stages and one is subjected to reviews by important committees. This is a meticulous process in which one’s eligibility to sainthood is assessed. And there is one bizarre requirement that sticks out: one has to have a miracle accounted to, and this miracle has to be proven.
Maybe it’s me, but I couldn’t take this seriously if it saved my life. In these times of secularisation, popularly proliferating science and the effective debunking of long standing superstitions, an entire contingent of grown-ups, politicians, clerics, general audience and Christian believers, are going to debate “proof” of a miracle? Are they mad? The world is going under, money is evaporating from the banks, and the economies of several countries are going to suffer tremendously, as well as probably many of these true believers. And they are discussing fairy tales?
This whole Pius XII thing should have been met with deafening silence in the media, if you ask me. Not that I am complying with that notion, but hey, I am justified. It is my job to point out these stupidities in life.
